Saturday 30 June 2018

Posts on this blog

Life is like a puzzle. Although one may think that the available pieces make sense, there may be other pieces that change all of that! This is the purpose of this blog: to provide information and interpretations on a wide range of issues, enabling readers to make sense of our world (and even their own lives) in an honest, coherent and sophisticated manner. "S/he who seeks will find!" The essays (some written in Afrikaans) were written by the scientist, philosopher and author Dr Willie Mc Loud (PhD in Physics, MA in Philosophy, MBL) [1] (and other authors) with the general reader in mind and engage with all sorts of interesting (and difficult) topics regarding science, philosophy, religion, the ancient Middle Eastern world, archaeology, eschatology, current events and other topics, bringing it all together in one coherent worldview. The essays argue for a balanced Christian worldview - between the extremes of secular Christianity and simplistic interpretations - providing a fresh and original perspective that is not a mere repetition or rehearsal of the usual views.

The blog is dedicated to all those people who are willing to read with an open mind and carefully consider all the various nuanced aspects of the issues at hand. All those who identify themselves with the doubting Thomas may find in the pages of this blog the answers to the questions with which they are struggling. Many of the essays are written especially with you in mind. There is, however, one challenge: in our fast-moving world, one would have to make time to read the essays. And that may require some real effort and commitment - but is there anything of real value in life that is obtained without some effort? 

The Thinker - Thomas Eakins

When we really listen to each other, we may find true answers in real conversation. At the same time, the essays provide tools, knowledge, and information to engage with others in everyday conversations about their faith. Take time and work through the topics which interest you and you may find the journey truly rewarding.

To facilitate the reader's access to these essays, the most important ones (all with links to the essays) are listed below according to the topic they belong to. Essays that are "highly recommended" are marked with an asterisk. Readers are welcome to use the information, share or forward the essays and make use of them as they see fit [2]. 

New Book Releases:
Willem McLoud


Willem McLoud

1. Kant, Noumena and Quantum Physics

Kant, Noumena and Quantum Physics
Published in Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 3 (2018) (94 pages)

2. Science, Philosophy, and God

Part 5. In defence of the soul
Part 6: Science and Atheism (*)
Part 7: Science and spiritual intuition
Part 8: The Christian and Evolution (*)

A critique of archaeology as a science
An archaeological perspective on the Bible
A critique of Biblical Criticism as a scholarly discipline (*)
A hermeneutical perspective on the Bible
Is the spirit world more than an idea?

3. Can we still believe the Bible? (*)

Part 1. Can we still believe the Bible? A hermeneutical perspective (*)
Part 2. Can we still believe the Bible? An archaeological perspective (*)
Part 3. Can we still believe the Bible? A scientific perspective (*)
Part 4. Can we still believe the Bible? A prophetic perspective (*)
Part 5. Can we still believe the Bible? An ancient world perspective (*)
           (The Sumerian Hypothesis: Abraham holds the key)

4. A New Ancient Near Eastern Chronology

Published the the Journal for Semitics 28/2 (2019)

Published in the Journal for Semitics 29/1 (2020)

5. The Sumerian Hypothesis

Published in the Journal for Semitics 29/2 (2020)

6. Origins in the Book of Genesis


7. Eschatology



9. Spiritual/geestelik

Meeting God
The Power of God
Wrong choices
Something or Someone is missing? (Dr. Francois Carr)
Revival is of the Lord (Arjan Baan)
A message for the church
God hoor
Die profeet
Om God te glo

10. Dialogistics/Apologetics

Towards a new dialogistic approach
Science and Atheism
Engaging with atheists and agnostics
Biblical inspiration: in a postmodern world
Faith and reason: finding the balance
The importance of the Septuagint in Biblical studies
On Christian morality
Nietzsche and the use and abuse of Darwin for life (Dr Louise Mabille)
Darwin's Doubt (book review)
The God Impulse (book review)

11. Current events

Brexit: What to expect
A New Iranian Empire is rising
The European Union: forever rising
The pursuit of geopolitical power in an emerging multi-polar world
Predicting a war against Iran? - an inquiry into war and peace cycles
Is a Third World War brewing?

COREideas
YouTube: BIBLE-GPS; COREIdeas
(New videos are uploaded here. Subscribe to be informed about new releases.)

[1] Books by Dr. Willie Mc Loud (PhD in Physics, MA in Philosophy, MBL):

Akteurs in die Laaste Drama, 'n studie van Openbaring 13 en 17 (1989)
Alles omtrent die "New Age" (1990)
Op pad na Armageddon, 31 bepeinsings oor Openbaring en ander Bybelprofesieë (1995)
Alles omtrent die opkomende Antichristelike orde (2000)
Die Arabiese Opstande (Griffel Media, 2011)
Op soek na Abraham en sy God (Griffel Media, 2012)

[2] Due recognition is required according to accepted copyright practice. Since all the essays include a reference to the author, they may be freely shared, distributed and circulated.

Tuesday 19 June 2018

Om God te glo

Daar is sekere dinge wat net daardie Christene verstaan wat in ‘n ware verhouding met God leef. Een hiervan is die stem van God. Skielik, onverwags, ervaar sulke persone in hul diepste menswees ‘n onverklaarbare wete dat God praat. Soms is dit wanneer hulle stiltetyd hou. Terwyl hulle deur die teks van die Bybel lees gebeur dit soms – en gewoonlik heeltemal onverwags – dat ‘n teks of ‘n gedeelte van ‘n teks skielik op ‘n baie persoonlike wyse lewend word en daar ‘n bewustheid kom dat God praat. Alhoewel dit ook gebeur dat Christene hulle eie begeertes in die teks inlees doen dit geen afbreek aan die feit dat God inderdaad met sy kinders praat nie.

God praat nie net met sy kinders nie. Somtyds sê God aan hulle wat in die toekoms sal gebeur. Dit gebeur gewoonlik in die vorm van beloftes wat God gee. Wanneer Christene die stem van God hoor – soos die skape die stem van hul herder hoor soos Jesus noem – dan gebeur dit dat hulle besef dat daardie belofte baie direk op dinge in hul eie lewe van toepassing is. Tussen al die baie beloftes in die Bybel, is daar dan daardie enkeles wat God baie direk aan sy kinders binne hul bepaalde omstandighede gee. Daardie beloftes is God se woorde wat direk op hulle van toepassing is. Sulke beloftes is soms baie spesifiek. En dan weet sy kinders dat dit wat God gesê het ook sal gebeur.

Soms lyk dit of omstandighede baie direk teen God se gegewe beloftes ingaan. Dinge gebeur wat lyk of dit God se beloftes totaal weerspreek. Dan kom die versoeking om te dink dat ons ons maar misgis het. Maar diegene wat sy stem ken weet dit is nie die regte antwoord nie. Vir hulle kan dit ‘n sielewroeging raak omdat dit lyk of God se woord nie uitkom nie. Of God nie sy woord volbring het nie. Dan lyk dit of als verlore is en of dit wat God gesê het onder geen omstandighede kan gebeur nie. Dit lyk of God ons versaak het.

Onder sulke omstandighede is daar ‘n paar opsies. Die een is om God te verwyt en kwaad te wees vir Hom. Om sy karakter as die God van sy woord te bevraagtaken. Die ander is om als waarin jy glo te hersien – miskien ken jy nie regtig die stem van die Here nie? Dalk was dit maar net ‘n vergissing? Maar as God baie duidelik gepraat het is dit nie so maklik om dit eenkant toe te stoot nie. Dan is die vraag: gaan ons bly glo of gaan ons maar moed opgee? Gaan ons soos Abraham “teen hoop op hoop” bly glo of gaan ons maar tou opgooi en aanvaar dat dinge nie uitgewerk het soos ons geglo het nie? Die Christen kan egter ook volhard in die geloof en gewoon die hele situasie aan die Here oorgee met ‘n innerlike vrede wat berus dat Hy wel weet wat Hy doen.
Image result for abraham God painting
Die engel keer dat Abraham vir Isak aan God offer - Rembrandt van Rijn

Ek glo dat God ons geloof eer. Wanneer ons Hom vertrou teen alle omstandighede en “bewyse” in. Ek was al by geleentheid in omstandighede waar my geloof tot die uiterste getoets is. Waar dit vir my gelyk het daar is geen manier waarop God se woord kan uitkom nie. Maar dan dink ek terug aan tye waartydens ek voor die versoeking was om op te gee en ek besluit het om God op sy woord te neem. En waar ek gesien het dat God inderdaad die God is wat sy woord hou. Ja, dat Hy die God van wonders is.

Ek onthou ‘n paar sulke geleenthede. Ek was nog ‘n student op Stellenbosch Universiteit toe die Here die belofte aan my gegee het: “die wat in Hom glo sal nooit beskaamd staan nie” (1 Pet. 2:6). So gebeur dit in my tweede studiejaar dat ek tydens ‘n predikaattoets ‘n totale “blank” slaan (ek onthou die vak was Optika). Alhoewel ek die vorige dag al die werk deurgegaan het, was dit als skielik weg. En indien ek die toets sou dop moes ek die vak herhaal. Ek onthou hoe ek daar gesit en gedink het: Here, ek dien u. Alhoewel my geestelike werk baie tyd in beslag neem, het ek wel als deurgegaan. U het belowe en ek gaan nie maar tou opgooi en uitloop nie! Ek gaan in geloof bly sit!

So sit ek maar daar en bekyk die vraestel. Als lyk soos Grieks! Na meer as ‘n uur (van die twee-uur vraestel) het ek nog niks geskryf nie. En toe: terwyl ek so kyk, sien ek die getal langs een van die vrae wat soos ‘n puntetoekenning lyk maar wat ek skielik in my hart weet is die antwoord wat om een of ander wyse deurgeglip het op die vraestel. Ek gebruik toe die getal (ek dink dit was 2) en stel dit terug in die formule. Vandaar doen ek die hele vraag terugwerkend. Ek was skaars klaar toe is die tyd verby. En so kry ek toe 40 % (volpunte vir die vraag!) - my laagste punt ooit maar genoeg om eksamen te gaan skryf.

Ek onthou nog ‘n geval. In later jare toe ek reeds getroud was het die Here vir my ‘n belofte gegee dat Marthé weer sou swanger word. Sy het verskeie miskrame gehad en toe sê die Here: “Daar sal geen misdragtige of onvrugbare in jou land wees nie” (Ex. 23:26). Sy raak toe weer swanger. Terwyl ek met ‘n uitreik in ‘n ander dorp besig was, bel sy en laat weet dat sy weer bloei. Dit was hoe al die vorige miskrame aangekondig is! Als het geblyk verlore te wees. Ek het in die kamer gegaan en die Here ernstig aan sy belofte herinner. Ek het Hom daarop gewys dat Hy die God van sy woord is. Toe ek weer met Marthé praat hoor ek sy is in die hospital opgeneem en dat die hartjie wonder bo wonder teen alle verwagtinge in steeds klop! En so het my jongste vasgebyt en is sy later gebore.

Ek kan nog verskeie sulke gevalle onthou. Ek kan ‘n meer onlangse een vertel. ‘n Paar jaar gelede het ek vir my meestersgraad in filosofie by UCT ingeskryf. Die graad het uit ‘n deel kursuswerk bestaan wat ek in die eerste jaar moes voltooi asook ‘n kort tesis wat ek daarna moes skryf. Ek het die tesis – wat op die filosofie van Immanuel Kant en kwantum fisika gefokus het – in die volgende jaar voltooi (met dubbel die toegelate hoeveelheid woorde!). Die finale uitslag sloer toe vir omtrent 6 maande. Uiteindelik hoor ek van die universiteit en maak ‘n afspraak om die prof te gaan sien. Daardie oggende sê die Here: “die steen wat die bouers verwerp het, het die hoeksteen geword” (Matt. 21:42). Ek besef toe daar is moeilikheid.

Uiteindelik vind ek dat die twee eksterne eksaminatore (van die VSA en Spanje onderskeidelik) dramaties van mekaar verskil het. Die een het in sy verslag geskryf: “the thesis is a remarkable achievement and truly outstanding” asook “This MA thesis is better than most PhD theses I have read” terwyl die ander een ‘n baie meer negatiewe opinie gehad het. Uiteindelik het die tweede eksaminator se punt gegeld. Alhoewel dit ‘n heel gemiddelde punt was, was ek baie teleurgesteld omdat ek ‘n baie beter punt verwag het (ek het my honneurs in filosofie met lof geslaag).

Op grond van die belofte het ek besluit om die essay aan uitgewers te stuur. Ongelukkig was daar maar min wat bereid was om so ‘n lang essay vir publikasie te oorweeg. Ek het dus meestal maar die eerste hoofstuk gestuur. Ek is drie maal weggewys.  Soms was ek maar baie moedeloos en het gewonder of die woord van die Here ooit sou uitkom. Tog is die Here getrou. Uiteindelik is die essay (wat intussen tot ‘n monograaf gegroei het soos ek die terugvoer bygewerk het!) deur ‘n internasionale aanlyntydskrif aanvaar wat spesialiseer in die werk van Immanuel Kant - met vyf keurders wat dit moes oorweeg. Dit is onlangs gepubliseer ("Kant, Noumena and Quantum Physics" in Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 3, 2018). Ek het net weereens besef dat die Here altyd getrou is.

Ek hoop my getuienis sal vir andere tot bemoediging dien. Deur al die baie jare wat ek die Here ken, het ek gevind dat ons Hom absoluut kan vertrou. Al maak dinge glad nie sin nie. Al lyk dit of die feite die geloof heeltemal weerspreek. Al lyk dit totaal onmoontlik. Die Here is die God van sy woord soos ons lees: “God is geen man dat Hy sou lieg nie; of ‘n mensekind dat dit Hom sou berou nie. Sou Hy iets sê en dit nie doen nie, of spreek en dit nie waar maak nie?” (Num. 23:19). Ons kan Hom vertrou. Soos Abraham moet ons die toets van geloof deurstaan – al neem dit baie jare voor die woord van die Here uitkom.

Na so baie jare kan ek maar net sê dat dit vir my so ‘n wonderlike voorreg is om die Here God te ken. Om Hom te dien. Om te weet: Hy is die Almagtige God wat als in sy hand hou. Ons kan God en sy weë nie verstaan nie. Ons moet ook nie probeer nie. Maar as God werklik iets gesê het dan sal Hy dit ook doen as ons Hom op sy woord neem. Hy is die Here. Hy is die God van sy woord!

Dr Willie Mc Loud (Ref. wmcloud.blogspot.com)

Friday 1 June 2018

Nietzsche and the use and abuse of Darwin for life

It is possible to interpret Nietzsche as a naturalist. ‘Returning man to Nature’ forms an important aspect of his ideas. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to place Nietzsche in the same category as Darwin, and much of his criticism against Darwin may in fact resonate with Christians, to such an extent that, of carefully considered, Nietzsche’s ideas may even be considered as a source for apologetics. An essay by Louise Mabille.

As much as Nietzsche drew upon Darwin, the natural historian was for him not much more than a footnote to Hegel. He is the biological symptom of an age sick with its own history. Indeed, he goes as far as to say that ‘without Hegel, there would have been no Darwin’ (Gay Science 357). Both Hegel and Darwin are ‘deifiers of success’ who see human history in terms of a single narrative, driven by a single mechanism, lending a stifling inevitability to
it. Before anything else, Darwin added to the contemporary problem of seeing history as a process. One of the most dangerous responses to nihilism – which without a doubt exacerbated it – is the insistence upon rational explanations that master the vagaries of human existence in its totality. Science appears to offer a respite from the shakiness of worldly existence by including all events and actions under abstract laws of development. In this way a false sense of optimism is created: transitory existence is redeemed by participating in the progressive unfolding of higher aims of history. But why stop at the human species? This narrative could include the totality of biological life!
Besides Darwin’s failure to deliver on creative potential, Nietzsche found it very disappointing that the eschatology implied by his discoveries did not materialize. It was not the fact that Darwin killed God that raised the Nietzschean ire, but the fact that God was still very much alive after the reception of The Origin of the Species. All that Darwin in truth provided was a succinct history of the species. And Nietzsche makes clear in the second Untimely Meditation that the deification of history, particularly in the form of a Hegelian-styled Reason that pervades history and suggests that there is a progressive, rational movement immanent to history is especially problematic. This historical ‘illness’ leads to debilitation, whether in the form of idealism, or more commonly the case in England, materialism.
Nietzsche is often grouped together with a number of ‘hermeneuticians of suspicion’, thinkers who undermined the easy and certain subjectivity that flowed from Descartes. This conception of subjectivity, which as we have seen in our Locke chapter, takes an established subject sub specie aeternitates for granted. That is to say, philosophy departs from an immutable subject beyond time that serves as the foundation for the entire philosophical edifice that developed during the Enlightenment. The hermeneuticians of suspicion in question usually refer to Nietzsche, Marx and Freud, but Darwin is often included, too. Nietzsche, being Nietzsche, takes suspicion one step further, and subjected Darwin (or Darwinism, to be precise) to a perspectivist critique. One can be suspicious even of the hermeneutician of suspicion that failed to take his own prejudices into account. Nietzsche returned Darwin to the nineteenth century, in other words, he examined the prejudices upon which his assumptions rested, such as the ability of the rational mind to render the world fully transparent.
Many of Nietzsche’s insights can be traced to scientific materialist origins and much of his vocabulary is derived from biological origins. This does not mean, however, that they can after all be fit into the uncomfortable metanarratives of biological perfection. It would be more correct to say that scientific materialism served as a fount of inspiration, much as he drew upon literary muses like Goethe and Shakespeare; he did not simply follow in the wake of science’s success. His true critique concerns the residues of theologically derived moralism still present in natural science, not the ‘petty details’. As we have seen in our Bacon chapter, Nietzsche did not automatically regard the triumph of a scientific theory to be valuable in itself. ‘Correctness’ is not a criterion for strength. As a matter of fact, the success of natural science far too easily makes it a seat of power that lays down rigid new rules that breed a new kind of conformity. Because its ‘truths’ are easily ‘proven’, they are less easily challenged. To challenge arbitrary power is hard enough, but to go against the obviously ‘legitimate’ power of the scientist is simply beyond the energy of most people. Biological ‘truth’ gives slaves a reason to conform. And they hardly need any encouragement. Consider Nietzsche’s words from Schopenhauer As Educator:

A traveller who had seen many countries, peoples and several of the earth's continents was asked what attribute he had found in men everywhere. He said: ‘They have a propensity for laziness.’ To others, it seems that he should have said: ‘They are all fearful. They hide themselves behind customs and opinions.’ In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that there will be no second chance for his oneness to coalesce from the strangely variegated assortment that he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience—why? SE, opening lines).
The mere fact that a debate over the alleged ‘independence’ of the theory of evolution continues to crop up in Darwinist circles proves the need for a Nietzschean reminder of the importance of non-biological criteria for strength. In ‘Independence, history and natural selection’ Gregory Radick reminds his readers that ‘Darwin’s theory of natural selection was no gift of sheer, solitary genius, but in several key aspects a product of Victorian culture’.[1] This can be seen as an example of the inseparability thesis. This conclusion may be obvious to readers used to the death of the author, but even today Darwin is seen as a kind of deus ex machine (sic) that spontaneously brought enlightenment upon those still captured in the dark ages of religious belief. This is known as the independence thesis. According to this thesis, particular Victorian elements aided Darwin to identify a timeless truth about Nature. The identification of this thesis, however, was inevitable, if Darwin did not do so, someone else would have come along.
Thinkers like these fail to understand what the term inevitable really means in the context of human life: no discovery of anything in the world of contingency is ever inevitable. It is just as easy to conceive of a world where the theory of natural selection – despite its correctness or use value – were simply never discovered. There are thousands of paths that history could have taken. Furthermore, there are thousands of scientific facts that will simply never be discovered, and more still whose true significance and value will never be appreciated. Yet the human race will continue as it always has: with the ability to create either a rich, strong life, or a poor, mediocre one, out of the material available to it at a particular point in time. As can be seen in the work of John Stuart Mill, Victorian England, with its Empire to run, strongly emphasized use. It was a world with a strong contempt for the ‘superfluous’ (think eugenics and the disregard for the lives of the natives colonized during Empire-building) with a strong pragmatic touch, all sprinkled liberally with the economics of Adam Smith. Darwinism was, if not exactly inevitable, at least a typical product of Victorian England. According to the historian Robert Young, the creation myth as seen in the book of genesis was a myth that suited the agrarian, pastoral world ruled by aristocrats before the Industrial Revolution. Similarly, the theory of natural selection with its Malthusian undertones, obviously ‘reflects a competitive, urban, industrial world’. This means that Darwinism basically consists of a reactive vocabulary, shot through with herd sentiments. None other than Karl Marx, in a letter to his collaborator Friedrich Engels, wrote: ‘It is remarkable how Darwin recognizes among beasts and plants his English society with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, “inventions”, and the Malthusian struggle for existence. It is Hobbes’ bellum ominum contra omnes’ [war of all against all]. (Marx quoted in Schmidt 1971: 46). This is already a case of one hermeneutician of suspicion suspecting another. It was of course Engels who famously put Darwin’s Malthusianism in its classic political context:

The whole Darwinist teaching of the struggle for existence is simply a transference from society to living nature of Hobbes’ bellum ominum contra omnes, and of the bourgeois-economic doctrine of competition together with Malthus’ theory of population. When this conjuror’s trick has been performed, the same theories are transferred back again from organic nature into history, and it is now claimed that their validity as eternal laws of human society has been proved.[2]
It is not clear how much Nietzsche derived directly from Darwin; most of his sources are second-hand, from sources like the Darwinians Ernst Haeckel, and Walter Bagehot, quoted twice in UM III, Schopenhauer as Educator. It is clear, however, that Nietzsche was familiar with Herbert Spencer’s Data of Ethics, translated into German in 1879. Whereas Darwin occupied himself more or less with pure science – inasmuch as science can be pure – Spencer developed a social theory around the theory of natural selection which is every bit as teleological as Hegel. Spencer upholds a model of human development that sees egoism and altruism eventually reconciled. Hegel’s influence is obvious in Spenserian remarks like ‘Truth generally lies in the co-ordination of antagonistic opinions’. This is mainly why Nietzsche regards him as a decadent.

Even the ideals of science can be deeply, even unconsciously, influenced by decadence: our entire sociology is proof of that. The objection to it is that from experience it knows only the form of decay of society, and inevitably it takes its own instincts of decay for the norms of sociological judgement.
In these norms, the life that is declining in present-day Europe formulates its social ideals: one cannot tell them from the ideals of out races that have outlived themselves –
The herd instinct – a power that has now become sovereign – is something totally different from the instinct of an aristocratic society: and the value of the units determines the significance of the sum. Our entire sociology simply does not know any other instinct than that of the herd, i.e, that of the sum of zeroes – where every zero has equal rights; where it is virtuous to be zero. –
The valuation that is today applied to the different forms of society is entirely identical with that which assigns a higher value to peace than to war: but this judgement is antibiological, itself a fruit of the decadence of life. – Life is a consequence of war, society itself a means to war. – As a biologist, Mr. Herbert Spencer is a decadent; as a moralist too (he considers the triumph of altruism a desideratum!!! (WP 53).
Darwin may have been a genius, but he was a timely one. That is, unlike Nietzsche himself, he fitted the values of his age, even if, superficially, he appeared to be in conflict with its key institutions. As we will see in our Mill chapter, his was an age that lacked ambition – mere survival and the search for pleasure was considered sufficient to serve as a sign of strength. However, survival is no measure for the value of life: it generates the same paradox as seeing the avoidance of pain and the hunt for pleasure as goals for existence. Natural selection gives us an account of how life came to be in its present form – not why the human phenomenon is worth having in the first place. Nietzsche gives us an answer to that question early in his oeuvre: it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that life is ultimately justified. That is, life becomes meaningful only through human evaluation. Although Nietzsche persistently asks that man be ‘translated back into nature’, he has something very different from Darwin in mind. Darwin certainly translates man back into nature. After The Origin of the Species there could no longer be a question of man as directly formed by a divine hand. However, there are better and worse translations. Edward Fitzgerald’s translation The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam is a work of art in itself. Reading crude determinism into Nature is not.Before the publication of The Origin of the Species, the young German philologist took it for granted that the most important part of man’s history was a natural history. As early as Homer’s Contest, Nietzsche describes man as a creature immersed in nature:

When we speak of humanity, the idea is fundamental that this is something that separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, there is no such separation: ‘natural’ qualities and those we call truly ‘human’ are inseparably grown together. Man in his highest and noblest capacities, is wholly nature and embodies its uncanny dual nature (Homer’s Contest).
 What Nietzsche objected to, is that modernity failed to seize upon the advantages that the new Darwinian theory offered. Rather than to recognize Nature as ‘red in tooth and claw’, nineteenth century moralists like sought to place Christian morality on an even more secure basis than narrative ever did. At least the latter had a Machiavelli to show for it. Instead of freeing up space for mastership, the ‘rules’ that the likes of Spencer read into ‘Nature’ threatened to secure man more tightly than ever before in a position of slavery. Where the priest in the black cassock was, there the one in the white coat shall be. Call an ascetic by any other name…
For Nietzsche, as was the case for Marx and Engels, the theory of natural selection only succeeds in lending support to the worst aspects of the reigning ideology. Nietzsche sees these as the reactive forces that triumphs in the form of modern culture. Giles Deleuze names these forces explicitly as ‘adaptation, evolution, progress, happiness for all, and the good of the community’[3] Although Nietzsche obviously accepts the thesis that existence is struggle, he is far less optimistic that natural selection truly favours the strongest and the best. If anything, natural selection has only the welfare of the species in mind, not the quality of the individual. It appears to destroy the ill-adapted in a purely indifferent fashion, and forces species and individual alike to aim for a position of equilibrium and stability. Darwin himself made it clear in the third edition of The Origin of the Species that natural selection should not be understood as automatically bringing about variability; it is concerned only with the bringing about and preservation of variations that prove beneficial to a particular species and the environment in which it finds itself. As Ansell-Pearson points out, natural selection, with its emphasis on the preservation of the species, is actually a highly conservative strategy.[4] (Ansell-Pearson 2000: 89). Perhaps Marx and Engels were right: natural selection does appear to favour, if not the bourgeois in person, then at least their values. It should come as no surprise that John Stuart Mill, as hesitant as he was to grant natural selection the status of a fully-fledged scientific hypothesis, he was willing to acknowledge it as a real, and not fictional causal process, a vera causa.
At the beginning of ‘history’, it is of course an entirely different story. There the strong warrior class conquers openly. Gradually, however, the bad consciousness pushed man into decadent over-refinement, not a goal for which Nietzsche considers worth striving. Writing about Paul Rée in the Preface to The Genealogy of Morals

But he had read Darwin, so that to some extent in his hypotheses the Darwinian beast and the most modern modest and tender moral sensibility, which ‘no longer bites’, politely extend their hands to each other in a way that is at least entertaining—with the latter bearing a facial expression revealing a certain good-natured and refined indolence, in which is mixed a grain of pessimism and exhaustion, as if it is really not worth taking all these things, the problems of morality, so seriously (GM, Preface).
It is perhaps for this reason that Nietzsche avoids a Darwinian vocabulary in The Genealogy of Morals, and his Will to Power thesis. ‘Adaptation’ belongs to slaves; it is the yielding to external circumstances. It is an influence that shows itself only after the active, shaping powers have had their day on the worldly playing field. It is these forces that are of true importance in the world. The ‘English psychologist’ and scientist display their slavishness by depicting life in terms that bespeak poverty rather than richness. This is a sign of a fundamental mistrust in life, or the ‘musty air of English overpopulation’ (GS 349) and the ‘Salvation Army’ (Beyond Good and Evil  252). Like all the Englishmen hitherto discussed, Darwin, for all his interest in it, is secretly anti-life: for him, the will to self-preservation operates as an excuse for the struggles that accompany life in all its forms. It is thus, just like human laws formed under the delusion that it promotes ‘justice’ as a ‘means against fighting in general’ (Genealogy of Morals II, 12). This attitude is in fact an assassination of the future of man, ‘a secret path to nothingness’ (GM II, 12) of an unambitious thinker.

Anti-Darwin. — As for the famous ‘struggle for existence’, so far it seems to me to be asserted rather than proved. It occurs, but as an exception; the total appearance of life is not the extremity, not starvation, but rather riches, profusion, even absurd squandering — and where there is struggle, it is a struggle for power. One should not mistake Malthus for nature.
Assuming, however, that there is such a struggle for existence — and, indeed, it occurs — its result is unfortunately the opposite of what Darwin's school desires, and of what one might perhaps desire with them — namely, in favor of the strong, the privileged, the fortunate exceptions. The species do not grow in perfection: the weak prevail over the strong again and again, for they are the great majority — and they are also more intelligent. Darwin forgot the spirit (that is English!); the weak have more spirit. One must need spirit to acquire spirit; one loses it when one no longer needs it. Whoever has strength dispenses with the spirit (‘Let it go!’ they think in Germany today; ‘the Reich must still remain to us’). It will be noted that by ‘spirit’ I mean care, patience, cunning, simulation, great self-control, and everything that is mimicry (the latter includes a great deal of so-called virtue). (TwiIight of the Idols, Skirmishes Of An Untimely Man 14).
Nietzsche prefers the less scientifically sound Lamarck, because he identified a truly active, plastic force prior in relation to adaptation – a force of metamorphosis. Strictly speaking, a revaluation of values would imply an overhaul of Darwinian values as well. This is perhaps why he distances himself from Darwin with such fierceness in Ecce Homo III I, where he expresses surprise at the naïve misunderstandings with which his Zarathustra was received ‘Other scholarly oxen have suspected me of Darwinism’.
A richer approach than the narrow notion of the ‘survival instinct’ is the idea of the Will to Power.

The wish to preserve oneself is the symptom of a condition of distress, of a limitation of the really fundamental instinct of life which aims at the expansion of power and wishing for that, frequently risks and even sacrifices self-preservation.
                              […]
… that our modern natural sciences have become so thoroughly entangled in this Spinozaist dogma, most recently and worst of all, Darwinism with its incomprehensibly one-sided doctrine of the struggle for existence, is probably due to the origins of most natural scientists: In this respect they belong to the ‘common people’; their ancestors were poor and undistinguished people who knew the difficulties of survival only too well at first hand. The whole of English Darwinism breathes something like the musty air of English overpopulation, like the smell of the distress of and overcrowding of small people (GS 349).
Rather than to simply react to external forces, the Will to Power is part and parcel of them, creating forms from within; utilizing and exploiting external circumstances as the arena of its own agonal actions. To be true to Nietzsche though, the Will to Power is arena and actor all in one. With the will to Power, Nietzsche rehabilitates the active dimension to life, as well as the playful side to evolution. The development of an organism is no single story, there is no genuine link between origin and telos. Instead of speaking of evolution at all, one should rather speak of a series of successive life-forms subject to an immanent, open-ended dynamics. Understood in this way, every life-form is fluid and never final, nor are the aims or directions open to it. The world is indeed the Will to Power –
and nothing else besides. Darwinian evolution is but a moment in the operation of the Will to Power – its bourgeois face. As an approach to life, the Will to Power has much more to offer, it applies to all life forms, not merely the biological. It also includes the physiological, psychological, technological and cultural domains.

[T]he ‘development’ of a thing, a practice, or an organ has nothing to do with its progress towards a single goal, even less is it the logical and shortest progress reached with the least expenditure of power and resources, but rather the sequence of more or less profound, more or less mutually independent processes of overpowering which take place on that thing, together with the resistance which arises against that overpowering each time, the transformations of form which have been attempted for the purpose of defence and reaction, the results of successful countermeasures. Form is fluid—the ‘meaning’, however, is even more so . . . Even within each individual organism things are no different: with every essential growth in the totality, the ‘meaning’ of an individual organ also shifts—in certain circumstances its partial destruction, a reduction of its numbers (for example, through the destruction of intermediate structures) can be a sign of growing power and perfection (GM II, 12).
Importantly, as both Paul Patton and Keith Ansell-Pearson have pointed out, what matters for Nietzsche is the experience of power, not its actual exercise. That is to say, power is evaluated in terms of its intensity, not its extensity. It is the battle itself, and one’s display of power in it, that matters, not some abstract teleological goal. Nietzsche was fast to distance himself from the utilitarian vocabulary of Charles Darwin:

‘Useful’ in the sense of Darwinian biology means: proved advantageous in the struggle with others. But it seems to me that the feeling of increase, the feeling of becoming stronger, is itself, quite apart from any usefulness in the struggle, the real progress: only from this feeling arises the will to struggle – (WP 648).

Feeling powerful does not depend upon one’s comparative power over someone else, as is the case with undiluted Darwinism. This puts the value of self-preservation into an entirely new perspective. Nietzsche warns that we should not automatically assume that the mere continuance of life is life’s supreme goal:
Physiologists should think again before positing the ‘instinct of preservation’ as the cardinal drive in an organic creature. A living thing wants above all to discharge its force: ‘preservation’ is only a consequence of this. Beware of superfluous teleological principles! The entire concept ‘instinct of preservation’ is one of them (WP 650).
As much as Nietzsche argued for a return to Nature, he did not want to have man dictated to by her. If, as we have seen in our Hume chapter, man was ultimately determined by the operations of nature, there was no need to emphasize this fact. Instead, man’s freedom as a creator had to be celebrated. Because Nietzsche frequently emphasizes Becoming over Being, it does not follow automatically that he is positing becoming as the essence of existence. What this means is that the nature of power precludes thinking of it as in terms of the termination of a process, a mere end. Instead, it is always transitive or intentional, it is potential. That is, power never simply brings about a sense of completeness and finality, rather, where there is life, there is struggle. Martin Heidegger has of course, famously declared Nietzsche to be the culmination of the metaphysical tradition, reading both the Eternal Recurrence and the Will to Power as reversed expressions of a traditional ontology. Johan Figl, too, also describes Nietzsche’s use of becoming as a process of substitution (Figl 1982: 73). Read this way, however, change becomes a new, stable ‘permanent’. If anything, the world is simply too mysterious, too feminine (that is, it always dons a mask) to allow for narrow metaphysical categories.
As German as it is to find rules in Reason (e.g. the Categorical Imperative), as English is it to find rules in Nature. If there is a moral to be derived from Nature, it is one that celebrates generosity. Only an Englishman, or to be fair, a nineteenth century Englishman, would argue that it is scarcity and lack that propels man forward.

But a natural scientist should come out of his human nook; and in nature it is not conditions of distress that are dominant, but overflow and squandering, even to the point of absurdity. The struggle for existence is only an exception, a temporary restriction of the will to life. The great and small struggle always revolves around superiority, around growth and expansion, around power – in accordance with the will to power which is the will to life (GS 349).
This is a key difference between Nietzsche and Darwin. Nietzsche, for all his sharp words, do not evaluate Nature in harsh terms. Nature is more generous than harsh in the Nietzschean book. Furthermore, Nietzsche – who, after all, grew up in nineteenth century Germany, where history dominated everything – simply did not see evolution as such an earth-shattering fact, but simply one more episode in the history of metaphysics.

There are truths which are recognized best by mediocre minds because they are most suited to them, there are truths which possess charm and seductive powers only for mediocre spirits one is brought up against this perhaps disagreeable proposition just at the moment because the spirit of respectable but mediocre Englishmen ‑ I name Darwin, John Stuart Mill and Herbert ‑is starting to gain ascendancy in the midregion of European taste. BGE 257).
Nature is as rich, generous and self-contradictory as Nietzsche’s texts, and therefore renders ethical naturalism a virtual impossibility. After all, an ethical naturalist needs an end or some standard in terms of which value can be measured. Lest any residual utilitarianism raises its ugly head, Nietzsche assures us that ‘well-being as you understand it – that seems to us no goal, that is an end, a state which soon makes man ridiculous and contemptible – which makes it desirable that he should perish (BGE 225). Endless becoming means that value is immeasurable, and that nature gives us no ethics. Instead, ‘becoming should be explained without recourse to final intention, becoming must appear justified at every moment or incapable of being evaluated; which amounts to the same thing (WP 708). This makes ethical naturalism, particularly the Darwinian version espoused by Richard Dawkins, difficult to maintain. Even if altruism should be proven to have Darwinian origins, as Dawkins holds, there is no reason why we should follow the ‘rule of nature’. In addition, Nietzsche speculates upon the ‘order of rank’ (BGE 228) among human values, holding that legislation values is what ultimately makes us human.

Bibliography

Keith Ansell-Pearson, Viroid Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Giles Deleuze, Nietzsche’s Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2006.
Johann Figl, Interpretation Als Philosopisches Begriff. Berlin: W. De Gruyter, 1982.
Jonathan Hodge and Geoffery Radick (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, Capitalism’s War on the Earth. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010.
Robert Young, Darwin’s Metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Albrecht Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx. London: Allen and Unwin, 1971.


[1] Gregory Radick in The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, ed. By Hodge and Radick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p.144.
[3] Giles Deleuze , Nietzsche and Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2006), p.151.
[4]  Keith Ansell-Pearson, Viroid Life (London: Routledge 2000), p. 

Author: Dr Louise Mabille

Read other essays written by Louise on https://louisemabille.wordpress.com/
Louise Mabille taught philosophy at the University of Pretoria, first as a tutor, then as a lecturer, between 2001 and 2013. After pursuing a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Pretoria on Nietzsche’s concept of justice, she followed it up with a second one on Milton’s concept of parrhêsia, completed at the University of Hull in Yorkshire. She is currently attached to the Theology Faculty at the Northwestern University (NWU). 














Ref. wmcloud.blogspot.com

Monday 7 May 2018

Part 4. Can we still believe the Bible? A prophetic perspective.

In this essay, I consider the trustworthiness of the Bible from a prophetic angle. Although Biblical Criticism scholars often reject the very notion of "prophecy", in my view prophecy is, in fact, one of the testable aspects of the Biblical claim to being divinely inspired. So, how strong is this kind of evidence? I discuss the messianic prophecies as well as other remarkable prophecies. I also develop good principles for judging prophetic material. What does that say about prophecies concerning the future?

The Bible is a many-faceted book. One of the most important characteristics of the Bible is the many oracles and prophecies that we find therein. In our scientific age, people are in general sceptical about all things supernatural, including prophecy, insofar as this refers to some kind of superhuman knowledge about future events. To the secular mind, it does not make sense that anyone can know the future. As such, some scholars from the Biblical Criticism tradition have found ways to discredit the Biblical idea of prophecy. The question is: Are they right? Is there really something called prophecy?

About one-third of the Bible consists of prophetic writings. This prophetic dimension of the Bible is actually extremely important in deciding what kind of book the Bible is. Although the Bible includes many historical narratives which tell about God's involvement in history, those stories cannot in themselves provide evidence that the Bible is what it claims to be, namely a divinely inspired book. Insofar as their truth can be established, they can at most show that the Biblical witnesses gave a trustworthy account of historical events (see parts 1, 2, 3 of this series for a detailed discussion thereof [1, 2, 3]). It is the prophetic aspect which is in the final instance the most important measure of the Biblical claim that it is no human book but a divinely inspired work - and contains God's message for humankind.

So, there is a lot at stake when it comes to Biblical prophecy. If we can show that the Biblical prophecies had indeed been fulfilled, then this goes a long way to establishing that the Bible is indeed what it says. Prophecy is one of the aspects of the Bible (see also the Biblical worldview [4]) which may provide scientifically measurable "evidence" for the existence of God insofar as the true fulfilment of prophecy goes beyond the possibility of scientific explanation and hinges on the Biblical claim that God knows the future and has through the ages revealed that to his prophets as we read: "I am the LORD: that is my name... new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them" (Is. 42:8-9).

The question therefore arises: Can we believe the Bible insofar as its prophetic claims are concerned? On the one hand, many Biblical Criticism scholars reject the notion of true prophecy (it does not fit into the "scientific" study of the Bible). On the other hand, we find that fundamentalist Christians often wrongly announce some date in which some prophecy such as the return of Jesus Christ would happen. This also discredits the notion of prophecy. Are there enough evidence to support the notion of true prophecy?

The problem with prophecy is that it is often very difficult to prove that the relevant events did, in fact, happen after the prophecy was given and was not retrospectively so named (this is due to our angle on history - living so long after the relevant events). As such, there are many Biblical prophecies which cannot be shown to be true in this sense. There are, however, some prophecies where we know that the related events do, in fact, came later. In that case, other considerations come into play: there may be various versions as well as interpretations of the prophetic texts where only one is consistent with an outcome that may be regarded as the fulfilment of the prophecy. As such, an evaluation of the evidence for and against the true fulfilment of prophecy is no easy task.

In this essay, I consider the typical arguments that Biblical Criticism scholars bring against Biblical prophecy. I discuss the problem in evaluating whether some prophecy can be shown to have indeed been fulfilled. I also discuss the problem of the variety of possible interpretation of a book such as Revelation. I establish good principles for judging prophetic material. I show that we do have good examples of Biblical prophecy that had been remarkably fulfilled. In the final instance, I also consider those prophecies which concern future events.

Biblical Criticism and prophecy

In Biblical Criticism, the aim is to study the Bible from a scientific perspective. The aim is to clear the text of all unhistorical data - of everything that scholars from a scientific point of view assume cannot have happened. From this angle, the ability to "predict" the future is obviously not possible in any scientific sense. So, when it comes to the Biblical prophets, such scholars tried to reconstruct the Sitz im Leben ("setting in life") in which the prophet operated – this is the historical context in which he presented his message within the social circumstances of the time. For these scholars, it is the ethical dimension of the prophet's message which is of special importance. The predictive aspect was considered as secondary – at most, it could have included some vague "predictions" which are not to be taken seriously because it would most probably be wrong.

What about bold statements about the fulfilment of prophecy found in the Biblical text? In their view, this should be interpreted either as vaticinia ex eventu (foretelling after the event) or that the author created fictional events to give the impression that some prophecy was fulfilled (some mention, for example, events from the life of Jesus in this regard [5]). So, when there are two options for reading the text which cannot be decided by independent means, namely that the prophecy was given beforehand or was retrospectively so interpreted, these scholars always assert the second option. A good example is the dating of the gospels later than 70 AD to allow for some knowledge by the authors about the Roman attack on Jerusalem - if the texts were written earlier it implies that this event was correctly foreseen by Jesus, which such scholars reject.  


One may ask: Is this good methodological practice? In this approach, the possibility of divine intervention in human affairs is excluded in principle. Although scholars can obviously not exclude the possibility that the prophetic interpretation in the text postdates the events mentioned therein, excluding the alternative as a matter of dogmatic belief pre-empts the outcome of independent research. Sometimes this even goes directly against the available evidence. In the case of Jesus's prophecy about the fall of Jerusalem found in the gospels, we actually have good reasons to think that it is a true prophecy. 


We can establish this from the most logical date when the Acts of the Apostles was written - which was by the same author who previously wrote the Gospel of St. Luke in which we find the prophecy about the destruction of Jerusalem (see Acts 1:1). Now, the story told in Acts stops when St. Paul had been in Rome for three years, which was in 62 AD. If there was more to say - such as what eventually happened to St. Paul in Rome etc. - then the author would surely have done so. This means that the Gospel of St. Luke could be dated before that (it was written first) - probably to 58 AD - which is well before the Romans captured Jerusalem in 70 AD. This is consistent with the author using the first person "I" (and "we") in the second part of Acts in accordance with the tradition that the St. Luke who wrote the book is the very same Luke who joined St. Paul on his missionary journeys.

Biblical Criticism scholars, in fact, presuppose what they eventually find! In presupposing that true prophecy is impossible (as well as all supernatural intervention in history), the only possible explanation acceptable to them is the one of natural science. In this way, they merely find what they set out to find! They never seriously consider the alternative possibility that there are more to this world than natural science. So, they reduce religious studies to a secular science without any consideration for the alternative. This is an obviously bad methodology in which Biblical studies is reduced to a secular science even though those "scientists" do not have the scientific means in the discipline to in any sensible way evaluate those claims. They merely assume them to be wrong! 

This is also bad hermeneutics! It is the kind of hermeneutics which believes that the contemporary scholars are - in contrast with the "primitive" people who wrote the texts - the only ones who have a truly scientific and "objective" view on the world from which the texts originated. Not only is this claim false (there is no "objective" angle on history [6]), it also shows an astonishing disrespect for the Other in the context of the dialogue taking place in hermeneutics. To quote Hermann Gunkel (1862-1932), who greatly influenced this discipline: "Following our modern historical world-view, truly not an imaginary construct but based on the observation of facts, we consider the other view entirely impossible" [7].


Using the insights of the great philosopher of hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), we can view our interaction with these texts as a conversation in which readers from our generation are in conversation with the authors of those texts (and with many others who have already throughout the ages participated in this conversation). What happens in the one-sided conversation which Biblical Criticism scholars have with those ancient authors, is that the one participant in the dialogue ignores the views of the others as being totally irrelevant to their our fixed opinions! They arrogantly believe that they know it all and that the other persons in the conversation are not worth listening to. What they should keep in mind that the whole modernist philosophical approach used to establish the foundations of the discipline has since been fundamentally discredited [6] - which should caution any scholar to be humble in their approach to these issues. 


Gadamer writes that such an approach to hermeneutics "destroys the true meaning of this tradition" [8]. The point is that, although contemporary scholars may not believe in true prophecy, those authors obviously did! They believed that the oracles were God-given and this influenced their whole perspective on life. Once this aspect is removed, we do not arrive at some “objective” point of view – we arrive at a reductive view with no correspondence to the historical situation. The fact is that they held those beliefs. The prophet, as well as those who listened to him, believed that these oracles came from God. This was part of their worldview; it determined their whole concept of life and the place of major (especially catastrophic) events therein. This is the historical situation! [9]


To reduce the prophetic message to a mere ethical message and prophecy to mere poetry is not only reductionist – it creates a new idea about that reality which is totally divorced from the true historical reality which existed in the context of the Hebrew prophetic tradition. It forces a certain rational view, typical of the modernist perspective, onto Biblical times without any concern for the views of the people who lived during that period. It gives the false impression that this is an “objective” view – the only one that is valid (so typical of the colonial spirit of modernism) – whereas it is, in fact, a total distortion of the real situation. Without doing so consciously, these scholars force their own paradigm onto the text which totally overshadows the voices therein, namely those of the author and the tradition from which the authors came. If we want to know something about the real situation, we have to listen to the voices present in the text and allow them to tell us something about their world. We have to be open to their truth - especially since we cannot prove them to be wrong!

Messianic prophecy?


There are, however, also prophecies which had been given long before the time when the events associated with their fulfilment took place. A good example of this is the messianic prophecies which are usually taken by Christians as being fulfilled in the life and person of Jesus Christ. 


There are many events from the life of Jesus which the Biblical authors understood in terms of the fulfilment of Biblical prophecy. We often find that the authors of the gospels mention that such or such an event was in accordance with the sayings of one of the prophets. The question is whether there is any value in the assessment by those Biblical authors that the Biblical passages which they refer to were indeed real prophecies? Biblical Criticism scholars are of the opinion that the "messianic allusions" in the four gospels are based on later interpretations. In their view, the passages were wrongly interpreted by the early Church and should not be understood in that way. This scholarly assessment is the reason why we find that all capital letters previously used to mark references to the Messiah in typical messianic prophecies had been dropped in some modern translations of those passages such as in Isaiah 53.


Why would one assert that the authors of the gospels held wrong interpretations of typical messianic passages? The main reason for this assessment is that these scholars assert that those passages are not predictions made with the Messiah in mind. Now, this shows a remarkable disconnect with the longstanding Hebrew tradition of understanding prophecy. We read, for example, in 2 Peter 1:19-21: "no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation [i.e. his predictions]. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but holy men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit". True prophecy is not based on the prophet's own interpretation of events and his own ideas about the future but was believed to have been supernaturally given through the inspiration of the Spirit of God [10]. The intentions of the prophet, therefore, play no role in prophecy!


According to Hebrew tradition, the prophet often did not even know that he or she was speaking of the Messiah - for the simple reason that the Spirit of God inspired them in a way which they themselves did not understand. The prophet often did not realise that he was speaking about events pertaining to the distant future. This is the Hebrew understanding of prophecy in contrast with the modern scholarly understanding which confuses prophecy with prediction and forces this interpretation onto the text. 


As such, some messianic prophecies originally concerned the king or the people of Israel but was interpreted as having reference to the Messiah (for example, Hos. 11:1 and Matt. 2:15; Ps. 2:9 and Rev. 2:27). The reason for such messianic interpretations was often that the poetic language used had undertones which suggest that there was more to it than that which seems to have been said [11]. One finds, for example, in Psalm 110 that the author prophecises that God's anointed would be a king, who sits on Yahweh's "right hand", as well as a priest "forever". 


So, how can we establish what is true prophecy and what not? When would it be that the New Testament author is merely taking Scriptural passages that seem to fit the events to assert his point? The answer is actually quite simple. Their interpretation of such passages did not happen in a vacuum - there was a well-established Hebrew tradition in which certain passages were marked as "messianic". The scholar Alfred Edersheim, who studied this issue extensively, showed that there were 456 separate Old Testament passages which the rabbinic scholars of the time interpreted as "messianic" [12] - which is miles away from the Biblical Criticism view that only a few passages can be so taken (Is. 7:10-17; 8:23-9:6; 11:1-9; Zech. 9:9; Mic. 5:1-4). 

Edersheim wrote: "A careful perusal of their [the Rabbi's] Scripture quotations shows that the main postulates of the New Testament concerning the Messiah are fully supported by Rabbinic statements" [12]. And this is the important point: the passages were so understood before Jesus arrived on the scene and can, therefore, be understood as consistent with the messianic expectations of the people of Israel. To try and reinterpret the idea of prophecy in such a way that typical messianic prophecies are disqualified seems to be a weak effort to overcome the substantial evidence that such prophecy was overwhelmingly fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.


There are, however, some Biblical prophetic passages which do not seem to support the meaning given to them by the authors of the gospels. A well-known one is the prophecy of Isaiah about the virgin who shall conceive and bear a son, named Emmanuel (Is. 7:14). How could the Biblical authors be so uninformed that they thought that the Hebrew word “almâh” (veiled) means "virgin" whereas it actually means "young maiden". The reason is, again, quite simple: They understood the word exactly as the translators of the Septuagint understood it when they translated the Tanakh in the third to second centuries BC, namely as meaning "virgin". It seems that the alternative interpretation developed later from the Jewish reaction against Christianity! 


Too many interpretations of one passage?

One of the problems with prophecy, and especially such prophecies as those in the Book of Revelation, is that there are so many different interpretations thereof. Biblical Criticism scholars often assert that St. John's visions as described in that book are not even prophecy at all but merely adheres to the apocalyptic genre of the time in which visions and symbols are used by the authors as a literary device. This, however, seems to go against an explicit statement in the text to the contrary, namely that the book is about "things to come" (Rev. 1:1, 19). The difference is between taking the book as the product of the imagination of the author or as containing true God-given visions as the author asserts [13]. 


Now, it is true that there are at least four interpretations of Revelation. The Preterists take the book as referring to past events from the period before the book was written (especially 70 AD). The Historists believe that the events described are those major events which impacted Middle Eastern history since the time of the writing of the book until the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The Idealists/Allegoricalists read the book as symbols pertaining to the ongoing struggle between Good and Evil and sees no prophecy in the book. The Futurists believe that the main part of the book concerns future events.


These are indeed very divergent views about the meaning of the book. Does that mean that one should discard it as not containing true prophecy? The fact that there are various interpretations of the book does not necessarily mean that it should not be taken as prophecy given the opposite claim made at the beginning of the book (Rev. 1:1, 19). When we allow for the possibility that it might be true prophecy, then one might suggest that we take the Old Testament prophecies which the Biblical authors took as referring to Jesus as the point of departure in interpreting those of Revelation for the simple reason that the book stands within the same Judeo-Christian tradition. In the very same way that the particular details in those Old Testament prophecies (such as those in the Book of Daniel) were important, the same would apply to the Book of Revelation where one finds similar details. 


When we allow that the Book of Revelation contains true prophecies - in spite of the Biblical Criticism claim that no such prophecy exists (as discussed above) - then one immediately allows that they might find an exact fulfilment just as the other prophecies regarding Jesus were interpreted (even if one holds another view). This means that one allows for the possibility that Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah and would one day return during the Second Coming. And then, it seems very likely that his Second Coming would be a real event just like his first appearance (and not merely an invisible event as some maintain regarding the events of 70 AD). In the final instance, this all hinges on the question whether God did, in fact, inspire the prophets and whether Jesus Christ was, in fact, the long-awaited Jewish Messiah? If this possibility is allowed (which cannot be excluded since so many prophecies have indeed been fulfilled in his person), then other prophecies about future events preceding Jesus's Second Coming might also eventually be fulfilled.


I sometimes get the feeling that one of the reasons why some interpreters are careful to avoid accentuating any details in the Book of Revelation - and stay with vague comments within a symbolic framework - is that they fear that they may be wrong. Now, this is indeed a problem that there are interpreters who make proud pronouncements which consequently turn out to be wrong. This should be a serious warning to be cautious. But is there no other way in which we may allow such details into our interpretation? I would like to suggest that scholars should develop eschatological models (similar to the theoretical models used in science) which can then be tested in the progress of time (more about that below). In this way, our interpretation of the details of the prophecy is not asserted as facts about future events but merely as a sensible reconstruction and integration of the details in prophetic passages. 


Principles for prophetic judgment


I suggest that any open-minded reader would allow for the possibility that real prophecy exists - even if they are inclined to think that the opposite is true. In that case, we may ask how one would decide what counts as real prophecy. In my view, the following principles are important:


1) Good hermeneutics requires that we engage with the texts with respect for the view of the author and the tradition from which s/he originated and not immediately reject his/her view out of hand because of our preconceived views about the world. In the same way that the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) introduced respect as the basis for our moral behaviour, Gadamer introduced it in the context of the dialogue which takes place in all interpretation. Even when we disagree, we should value the point of view of the Other. Even though we might think his position to be nonsensical, we should remember that we do not have an objective view on the world and it is always possible that we are actually wrong in our assessment (as happened regarding the modernism of the Biblical Criticism of the early twentieth century [6]). As such, we must not only allow for the possible existence of true prophecy but also for other interpretations of prophetic passages than our own.

2) Biblical prophecy stands within a long tradition in which the Biblical text had been read in a certain way. The philosophers Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) taught us that we all belong to a paradigm or cultural setting which forms our minds in a particular way. We are people of our time - just as the Biblical authors were of theirs. Today with the emergence of mass media it is possible to change culture quite rapidly - but that does not apply to the ancient world of old Israel. Their culture and tradition stayed the same even in the context of the early Christian Church which evolved from their midst. As such, we should acknowledge their prophetic tradition not only insofar as the texts are concerned but also insofar as their interpretation of those texts is concerned. Our modern interpretation of their texts cannot be better than their own for the simple reason that we are very much removed from their interpretive tradition.

What is also important is to understand that the prophecies in the New Testament which concerns the Second Coming of Jesus Christ stand in the very same prophetic tradition as those which concerned his first appearance. As such, we should remember that the very same people who took the Old Testament prophecies in a literal sense as being fulfilled in Jesus Christ also expected that the prophecies concerning his Second Coming would be fulfilled in such a manner. This suggests that the Idealists/Allegoricalists' attempt to find some "deeper meaning" than the obvious one (say, of the period of "42 months" (3 1/2 years) mentioned in Revelation) is not consistent with the prophetic tradition from which those texts originated. Those people did not have any knowledge of that very Greek approach at that early period [14]. We should allow that the details of the prophecies might, in fact, be literally fulfilled even when the text includes metaphors and symbols.

3) All prophecies are applied to world events. This application might refer to events in the distant past or the future. The process in which this application is done is, however, also important. So often we find that interpreters see something happening in the world which they then on an ad hoc basis relate to prophecies which they think could be relevant to those events. This is, however, not good hermeneutic practice. We should develop good eschatological models pertaining to future prophecy and only then apply them to world events in a systematic way - very much in the same way that we apply theoretical models in science to empirical data. In this way, the eschatological model is known beforehand and the fulfilment thereof can be better evaluated. This means that scholars do not have to be afraid to engage in a more substantial manner with prophecies about the "future". This, however, does not mean that they have to accept everything that had become associated with the Futurists (especially regarding the Rapture [15]).


Re-reading the Bible

We can now consider some Biblical prophecies in more detail. Although there are many Biblical prophecies which the Biblical authors believed (and believers in general believe) to have been fulfilled, I only discuss ones of which the fulfilment can be shown to have happened sometime after the prophecy was given. I discuss two very remarkable such prophecies.

The first is the well-known prophecy of Jeremiah that Jerusalem would be given in the hands of the Babylonians for a period of seventy years (Jer. 25:11-12). We know that this period was understood by the exiles to have commenced when the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar first conquered Jerusalem in 605 BC which was also when Daniel and his friends are said to have gone into exile to Babylon (see Dan. 9:1, 10; the city was taken again in 597 BC and 587 BC). The Neo-Babylonian rule came to an end when the Persians conquered Babylon in 539 BC. 

According to the Book of Daniel, the first ruler of the Persians was King Darius, "of the seed of the Medes", in whose first year the prophet Daniel is said to have received one of his prophecies (Dan. 9:1-2; which would have been in about 538 BC). Although the historicity of this Darius is disputed, there is no good reason to doubt that such a person lived (archaeological data has certain limits - see [16]). After him came the well-known Cyrus, who allowed Israel to return to their homeland in the first year of his reign in Babylon (Ezra 1:1). If we assume that Darius ruled for two years (Dan. 9:1-2 seems to imply a reign of more than one year), then Cyrus gave his command in about 536 BC. When we allow for prophetic reckoning (a prophetic year was considered to be 360 years; see Rev. 11:1-2), then the prophecy of Jeremiah may be considered to have been remarkably fulfilled. The period from 605 BC to 536 BC is exactly 70 prophetic years.


Another remarkable prophecy is the one attributed to Daniel in the above-mentioned passage (Dan. 9:20-27). In this case, we read about a period of 70 "weeks" of years, which is 70 x 7 = 490 years, which is in turn subdivided into two periods of 69 "weeks" of years (483 years) and the final period of one "week" (7 years) [17]. The first 69 "weeks" of years is our present concern. According to the prophecy, it would commence with the command to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and end just before the "anointed one" (Messiah) would be "cut off" (i.e. dies). Although scholars differ in their interpretation of the meaning of the two events mentioned, there is a general consensus that the period of 69 "weeks" of years refers to the time in between them (for a discussion of all the views, see [18]).


The only command that was ever given to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, was the one given in the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of the Persian king Artaxerxes Longimanus (Neh. 2:5). This was in the year 445 BC (Artaxerxes's rule is calculated from the death of his father Xerxes in July 465 BC [19]). The three previous commands that were given by Persian rulers, were all concerned with the building of the temple – not the city of Jerusalem (Ezra 1:2-4; 5:13; 6:3-14; 7:12-26). When we take this date as the starting point for the 69 "weeks" of years or 483 years, then the period came to an end during the time of Jesus's ministry on earth, which would be consistent with him being the Messiah. This reading is also consistent with the general expectation that the Jewish Messiah would appear in the time when Jesus did (Lu. 2:26; 3:15; Joh. 1:19, 20) - which was most probably based on this very prophecy of Daniel.


The period of 69 weeks of years would come to an end when Messiah, a Prince, appears - which is just before he would be "cut off" [20]. Given that the prophecy seems to have reference to Jesus, we might ask: To which event during the earthly ministry of Jesus does the prophecy refer? Or to put it differently: when did Jesus present himself as Messiah and King (Prince) to Israel? This clearly happened when Jesus rode upon the donkey into Jerusalem in accordance with the prophecy of Zechariah: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass" (Zech. 9:9). When that happened, the crowd cried out: "Hosanna, Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord" (Joh. 12:13).


Entry into Jerusalem, Giotto
The Entry into Jerusalem by Giotto (1305 AD)
From the details in the Gospel of St. Luke, we know that John the Baptist started his ministry in the fifteenth year of Cesar Tiberius (Luk. 3:1-3). The fifteenth year of Tiberius commenced on 19 August 28 AD. Jesus was therefore baptized in the autumn of 28 AD. This means that he was crucified three-and-a-half years later in the year 32 AD [19]. The year 32 AD is also the only year in which the calendar agrees with the events of that time. Jesus would, therefore, have entered Jerusalem on the donkey on the Sunday before the crucifixion in the year 32 AD (see Joh. 12:1, 12).

This period of 69 weeks of years, i.e. 483 years, that is from 445 BC to 32 AD, ends long after the latest possible date that the text could have been written (in about 164 BC as is accepted in Biblical Criticism circles). This means that a considerable part of the prophecy refers to events that happened long after the text was written (by the latest estimates). Traditional Christians believe that the prophecy dates much earlier, namely to the time mentioned in the Book of Daniel (538 BC; right at the beginning of the Persian rule over Babylon). Irrespective of the position taken, the 483 years obviously ends long after the latest accepted date for the writing of the book. One can also not think that Jesus could have calculated the date to superficially "fulfil" the prophecy because the kind of mathematics necessary to do the calculations was not available at that time.

When we do the calculations, we find that the period between these events in 445 BC and 32 AD is exactly 173880 days (for a detailed discussion, see [21]). Again, when we use prophetic years (360 days in the year; see Rev. 11:1-2), then we find that the period is precisely 69 prophetic years – even to the exact day! One cannot but to say that this is truly astounding. This is one of those cases where we have a prophecy with sufficient details to be tested rigorously as well as the tools to do that test. However one sees this, one cannot but to at the very least accept that this is an astonishing coincidence. 

Prophecies about the future


This brings us to the future. As we have good reasons to think that Biblical prophecy has been accurately fulfilled in the past (and I do not know about any such prophecy that was, in fact, wrong), we may think that the same would happen in the future. In this case, however, I would like to merely present an eschatological model which take another prophecy in the Book of Daniel as the point of departure, namely the one in Daniel 7 (for a more detailed exploration of this model, see [22]). 


In this prophecy, all the different empires which would rule over the people of Israel since the time of Nebuchadnezzar until the time of judgment is depicted as symbolic beasts. At the time of judgment, we read that "one like the Son of man comes with the clouds of heaven", who would receive dominion, glory and everlasting kingship over all the earth (Dan. 7:13-14). Jesus applied this prophecy to his Second Coming, saying that "the Son of man [would] come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matt. 24:30). When we take this prophecy in the Book of Daniel seriously, we might view it as describing events throughout history to the Second Coming (which has obviously not yet arrived; it would not happen in secret but with "great power and glory").


What is further remarkable about this prophecy, is that it has a twin: there is another prophecy in the Book of Daniel which agrees on each point with this one, even though other symbols are used (in Daniel 2). In the vision of the prophet described in chapter 7, various beasts rose from the sea. In Nebuchadnezzar's dream in chapter 2, a metal statue is depicted. The four beasts (lion, bear, leopard and a dreadful and terrible beast that was exceedingly strong with great iron teeth) correspond with the four metals from which the statue was made (gold, silver, brass, iron). In both cases, the last one is depicted as stronger than all the others, as a beast/metal which "brake in pieces" (Dan. 7:7; 2:40) and devour/subdue. The great beast had ten horns whereas the statue had ten toes. The "Son of Man" who came with the clouds of heaven at the time of the great judgment agrees with the rock which broke the statue in pieces and filled the earth. Both prophecies mention the "everlasting kingdom" that would follow.

The largest part of the prophecy has been remarkably fulfilled if we take the symbols in the following manner (which is by far the most reasonable explanation - for a detailed discussion of all the different views, see [23]): the lion/gold refers to the Neo-Babylonian Empire (626-539 BC); the bear/silver refers to the Persian Empire (550-330 BC); the leopard/brass refers to the Greek Empire (of Alexander the Great; 356-323 BC) which was divided into four in the time after his death (323-63 BC) in agreement with the four heads of the leopard; the great and terrible beast or iron which is depicted as stronger than all the others refers to the Roman Empire (27 BC- 476 AD) which was divided into two in agreement with the two legs of iron.

One may suggest that the two feet (made of iron mixed with clay) which came after the two iron legs but preceded the ten toes (made of the same), refer to the two empires which came in the place of the eastern and western parts into which the old Roman Empire was divided, namely the Byzantine Empire (306-1460 AD) in the east and the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806 AD) in the west. These two empires included the core areas of the two parts of the old Roman Empire. In my view, the iron refers to the Latins (Romans) and the clay to the Germanic peoples who lived (for the most part) to the north of the Roman Empire but later settled within its boundaries. Both of these were included in these later empires, whose geographical areas changed a lot over the duration of their existence. 

The ten horns/toes would refer to an empire that comes after these empires (the feet) but which has not yet appeared [23]. These are "ten kings" who will rise from the (geographical area of the) old Roman Empire (Dan. 7:24) to rule over a single end-time empire (Dan. 2:42). After that an eleventh horn appeared from between the ten other horns (in Dan. 7) and grew greater than them; this depicts a great Antichristian figure [24] who would persecute the saints for 3 1/2 years (Dan. 7:25) in the time directly before the coming of the Son of man with the clouds of heaven at the time of the great judgment (Dan. 7:13-28).

This interpretation may be refined by including other relevant prophecies which mention these same things (for example, in the Book of Revelation). This is not the place to do that (see [22]). What this model proposes, is that a final antichristian empire would rise from the ashes of the old Roman Empire. In the end of times, a great empire would rise in the geographical area of the old Roman Empire over which "ten kings" would rule - which may refer to some kind of "council of ten" (we can only speculate) - and which would eventually hand over their power to the final Antichrist [25].

One may suggest that the current efforts to integrate the European Union may eventually lead to the establishment of such an empire. If the democratic EU evolves into such an empire, we would see history repeating itself since the old Roman Empire also evolved out of the Roman Republic. It is indeed quite amazing that the EU has, in fact, been rising in the exact geographical area where the prophecy predicts that the end-time empire of the final Antichrist will appear. This means that we must consider developments in the EU in this light which would eventually show if this model is correct. 

The slow but steady process through which the EU has become ever more centralised and more powerful is consistent with this interpretation of the prophecy - but it is obviously still very far from the empire which one would expect in accordance with the prophecy. As such, I think that we may still have to wait a very long time before the world situation develops in accordance with the prophetic picture described above. If the remarkable correspondence between this prophecy and world history (as discussed above) is for real (one can never exclude the possibility of an astounding coincidence!), then it seems very likely that the future would also unfold as foretold in the prophecy.  

Conclusion

In this essay, I discuss the Bible from a prophetic angle. Are the oracles and prophecies in the Bible for real? Did God really inspire the prophets in such a way that the things which they wrote have reference to future events? I argue that we have good reasons to accept that true prophecy exists. I also argue that we should take statements about prophecy in the Bible serious. We should at the very least be open to the prospect that such prophecies had been fulfilled in ancient times exactly as the authors assert - we have no good reasons to distrust their judgment! 

I also discussed some prophecies that had been remarkably fulfilled, such as the one of Jeremiah about the 70 years of exile or the one of Daniel about the 70 "weeks" of years. The fact that Israel did, in fact, went back from Babylon 70 years after Nebukadnezar first took the city and that Jesus did, in fact, revealed himself in Jerusalem as the Messiah exactly 483 years after the royal command to rebuild the city of Jerusalem - exactly as foretold - should be good reasons to believe that these prophecies (and more generally, the Bible) were inspired by God. Even if we think of some reason to doubt this, I think anyone would have to admit that it is an astounding coincidence that one is able to find such a precise fulfilment in the first place! Finding even one such an extraordinary "black swan" (and I discussed a few) is good enough to show that they do indeed exist.


In my view, the fulfilled prophecies in the Bible provide strong evidence that Jesus is indeed the Messiah and that he would, therefore, one day return as foretold. In this case, we also have prophecies about future events that would precede his Second Coming. Again, it seems to me very remarkable that we can, in fact, fit the prophecy of Daniel about the various world empires (Dan. 7) so beautifully with world history. Within this framework, the next empire which would arise would be the final world empire (corresponding to the ten horns/toes). 


As such, it is again amazing that we do, in fact, find that a great political power is rising in the exact geographical area (of the old Roman Empire and the two succeeding empires) where such an empire is expected and also in the right timescale (about 150 years after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire). The question is: Will the EU brake apart or will it continue to grow geographically and in power? Although we cannot assert that the second outcome will happen - we are merely working with an eschatological model - this would definitely be a strong indication that we are seeing the fulfilment of true prophecy. It seems to me that one would be extremely foolish to reject prophecy and the God who inspire without at least careful consideration.


[1] Part 1. Can we still believe the Bible? A hermeneutical perspective.
[5] These are mostly events which cannot be independently verified. But this implies an extreme form of scepticism which is not consistent with good hermeneutics.
[7] Gunkel, Hermann. 1901. Genesis. Gottingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht.
[8] Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1994. Truth and Method (translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, second revised ed.). New York: Crossroad.
[10] One of the good examples of prophecy which was never previously understood in a particular way until the time of its fulfilment, is those passages which concern God's inclusion of the heathen in his plan. St. Paul writes: “the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets” (Rom. 16:25, 26; see also 11 Pet. 1:19-21).
[11] We find something similar in so-called "prophetic perspective", also called "mountain peaks of prophecy", where various events happening some time apart are believed to have been included in the same prophecy. The Prophetic Discours is an example, where the reference to the capture of Jerusalem by the heathen is interpreted as referring to both the events of 70 AD when the Romans took the city as well as future events in the time of the Antichrist.
[12] Edersheim, Alfred. Prophecy and History in Relation to the Messiah (Warburton Lectures for 1880-1884, 1885).
[13] The radical scepticism of Biblical Criticism comes down to saying that scholars should accept as their point of departure that the Biblical authors, in general, gave false testimonies and impressions, i.e. they lied. This radical scepticism goes back to the positivist roots of the discipline which asserted that nothing that is not supported by evidence can be believed. This philosophical approach has since been discredited and no philosopher of science worth the name takes it seriously. We know today that archaeology is not an empirical science and that not finding evidence can never be taken as proof of no evidence [15]. In contrast, the Biblical authors such as St. Paul claim that "holy men of God" wrote the texts and that their testimony is true and trustworthy. 
[14] Pentecost, J. Dwight. 1981. Things to Come. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
[15] The Rapture: The different views.
[16] A Critique of Archaeology as a Science
[17] The first period of 69 x 7 = 683 years are also subdivided into two periods of 7 and 62 weeks of years but that has no direct bearing on the discussion.
What about the final period of one week? According to this prophecy, the death of the "anointed one" (or: Messiah) would be followed by the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the sanctuary by "the people of the prince that shall come" (Dan. 9:26). This happened in 70 AD when the Romans captured the city (about 40 years after the crucifixion). The last week (7 years) is mentioned only after these events are referred to in the prophecy, which may imply that it follows sometime after that (for a detailed discussion, see [18]).
Some interpreters are very sceptical of the "gap" between the first 69 weeks and the final week (of years) and are therefore even uneasy with the astounding fulfilment of the 69 weeks! The reason for this seems to me due to the connection between the final week (placed at the end of this era) and the dispensational view which take this week as a dispensation on its own (and so justifies a rapture of the church "before the final seven years"). This needs not be the case. The fact that these seven years concern the people of Israel does not necessitate a dispensation of its own. There is no conflict therein that some prophecies about Israel are fulfilled in the present era (dispensation, if you like). In fact, it seems strange that God would revert to some previous (or similar) dispensation in the process of his progressive revelation. For a detailed discussion on the issue (see [15, 18]). 
[18] The Final Seven Years: The different views
[19] Anderson, Robert. 1984. The Coming Prince. Michigan: Kregel.
[20] One might argue that there are other interpretations of this prophecy in which these details are understood differently. Even when that is accepted, it is still astonishing that any interpretation of the prophecy (at all!) could agree so precisely with the historical facts on the ground given the chances of that happening. The agreement with these facts suggests that this is, indeed, the correct interpretation.
[21] A Very Remarkable Prophecy
[22] When can the Second Coming of Jesus be expected?
[23] The Rise of the Final World Empire: The different views.
[24] The Final Antichrist: The different views.
[25] In the Book of Revelation, we read that the rule of the "ten kings" is still in the future. They will rule together with the "beast" (who will persecute the saints for 3 1/2 years; Rev. 13:5-7) to whom they will give their power and against whom Jesus Christ will fight in the great battle (Rev. 17:12-14; 19:19, 20).

Author: Dr Willie Mc Loud (Ref. wmcloud.blogspot.com)
The author is a scientist-philosopher (PhD in Physics; MA in philosophy). He writes on issues of religion, philosophy, science and eschatology.

Part 1. Can we still believe the Bible? A hermeneutical perspective
Part 2. Can we still believe the Bible? An archaeological perspective
Part 3. Can we still believe the Bible? A scientific perspective